


an atom in a sea of nothing

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-30 13:39:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3938845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fear is a defense mechanism; it heightens the senses and can even increase reaction time. And she needs every defense she can muster against Grant Ward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	an atom in a sea of nothing

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This is a post-season 2 fic, which means it fully acknowledges everything from the finale. As a result, I'm kinda hard on fitzsimmons. Which I do feel bad about.
> 
> The title comes from Gabrielle Aplin's "Start of Time."

Frank and Christine Simmons wave goodbye as the cab takes their daughter to what they believe will be a private airfield. Frank cries. Christine, without so much as a glance, pulls out a handkerchief for him.

In reality, the cab will take her to the train station, from which she’ll travel north to a hotel she’s already booked for the remainder of her leave. She made it four days before faking the emergency call back to SHIELD, which is pretty good considering that she decided on that course of action before she was with them twenty-four hours.

It’s not their fault. They aren’t smothering or cruel or abusive. They’re kind. They love her. She’s supposed to love them back.

Just like Fitz. He loves her. When he kisses her, he’s always so tentative, so willing to stop if she has the slightest hesitation. He takes her hand during meetings, laces their fingers together beneath the table like no one else realizes what they’re doing.

She thinks sometimes that she can feel his love for her like a physical thing, but it always slips past before she can grasp it. If she could hold onto it longer, maybe she’d remember what it was like to love him. And she _did_ love him once, didn’t she? She’s sure of it. Or at least she might have. There was nothing between them before but friendship and the _possibility_ of more. They were moving in that direction and she was the one who moved them. She wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t love him, right?

She watches the scenery go by and forces herself to remember childish cares and concerns. That’s why she’s come here at all, to reconnect. It’s not going well.

As the cab passes the park, she goes through every second she can remember of her picnic on her sixth birthday. Spending all afternoon outside, waiting to catch a toad when she was seven. Scraping her knee on that curb when she was eight. She cried so hard she ran home in the wrong direction, didn’t realize until she saw those bright blue library doors.

The library is on the opposite side of town from the train station.

“Sir?” She slides open the tiny door in the cheap, plexiglass barrier. “I think you might have taken a wrong turn.”

The barrel of an ICER appears in the hole. “No, I didn’t,” the driver - who she is beginning to think is probably not a cab driver at all - says, and fires.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Lorenzo is a recent addition to SHIELD’s ranks. He still has the eye implant John Garrett fixed him with six years ago, but he’s managed to jerry rig the system so it can no longer send or receive messages. It’s just an eye.

That’s what Coulson thinks anyway, and _that_ is why Lorenzo is one of Grant’s top five favorite agents. (He keeps a list. Top five get their choice of missions. Bottom five get fed to the scientists down in the labs. If they survive, they never drop that low again. It‘s a good system.)

Between Coulson’s still-smoldering hatred of Garrett and his grief over Amador’s fate, it’s easy for Lorenzo to get inside SHIELD with that shitty sob story. In actuality, the man is a grade-A sociopath and _wanted_ the implant. When Grant found him three months ago, he was like an overeager puppy, happy his master had finally come home.

The feed from Lorenzo is always in one corner of the giant screen Grant uses to run missions. But Lorenzo’s new and without giving SHIELD access to the feed from the eye, he’s not much of a standout. So he’s been on artifact duty since joining up. That means he stands in a room all day and watches a giant, floating slab of rock in a glass case.

Every so often a scientist would come in, giving Grant a chance to see Fitz or Simmons or Morse - who’s all healed up, the bitch - but that was up until nine days ago. Nine days ago the rock _melted_. Just dropped down into a wave of muck that sloshed so violently around its enclosure that giant crates were brought in to support it on every side, just in case it was knocked over. Not that the crates did much good, since the rock was back to being a rock after only a few minutes.

According to the agents Lorenzo talked to afterward, that’s what the rock was _supposed_ to do. What it _had_ been doing with some regularity - a few times a day and never so violently - up until five months ago when it stopped completely.

Grant happened to be in the command room when the incident occurred, watching a field team go head to head with SHIELD. If he hadn’t been, he probably never would have cared. He would have laughed, called Coulson an idiot for bringing some terrifying unknown into his base, and washed his hands of it. Except he was there, and he saw what happened halfway around the world at the same moment the artifact liquefied. Which is why he’s ready and watching now, when it does it again.

Grant’s phone rings as the artifact reforms. He frowns, disappointed. Slater held such promise as an agent too.

“I said empty the mag,” Grant says by way of greeting.

“She’s barely a hundred pounds,” Slater says. “One round’ll keep her out for-”

Oh yes, Slater is definitely going down to the labs when he gets back. “ _Empty the mag_.”

On Lorenzo’s feed, Fitz is obviously yelling and that Weaver woman is taking readings. They both freeze when the artifact liquefies again. It doesn’t reform for nearly a full day, and by that time SHIELD’s figured out it’s missing one of its agents.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Her whole body aches when she comes back to herself. The pain is not helped by her position: sitting upright in a stiff, metal chair, handcuffed to a table. Worst of all though, is the man sitting across from her.

“Ward,” she says. There’s no rage, no hatred. If she’d thought of Ward at all in the last months, she might have hoped at least those feelings would remain intact. No such luck.

He seems to notice her lack of disdain and tilts his head curiously as he regards her. “Simmons.” He waits a few moments more, probably wondering if she’ll start quaking in fear. “Anything to say? How much you missed me? Condolences? Promises to kill me?”

That’s right. She tried to kill him. She almost forgot.

“Why am I here?” she asks. The room is small, just big enough for an interrogation. She tips her head back and sees a hook dangling from the ceiling. The table must move then, otherwise it would put the interrogator in a very awkward position.

He’s still got that probing expression when she looks back to him, expectant. He seems to come to some sort of a decision - or wants her to think he has - and slides a tablet over from the edge of the table. A few seconds later, he pushes it in front of her, allowing her to see footage of Vault E.

“This is live,” he says “That thing’s been freaking out ever since my man grabbed you. It stopped about an hour ago.”

She shifts her shoulders, trying to get rid of the lingering tightness there. That long? With how she feels?

“You’re not surprised.”

She feigns a casual attitude. “The artifact is in a constant state of flux. What it will do next is anyone’s guess.”

“Oh, I have one.” Ward grins as he draws a gun from beneath the table. “See, I think if I shoot you now - like my guy shot you when it started going crazy, and like you were shot the _last_ time it went nuts - it’s probably gonna do it again.”

She stiffens in the chair. The cuffs dig into her wrists as she presses her elbows to her sides.

He sets the gun down. “But I don’t want to shoot you, Simmons. I just want you to tell me what’s going on.”

Ward, she remembers, always has a motive. Frequently one which no one can make sense of until it’s too late. He’s impossible to get a read on at the best of times, but what if her current limitations give him an advantage? She’s not afraid of him, but fear, she knows, is a defense mechanism; it heightens the senses and can even increase reaction time. If history is to be believed, she needs every defense she can get against this man.

“Why?” she asks.

He folds his hands on top of the table. “Because I plan on burning SHIELD to the ground and salting the earth where it stood,” he says placidly. “And that-” he points to the live feed- “seems to have all of them freaking out.”

She bristles at the implication he’ll use the artifact as a weapon. That’s what it was made to be, yes. Carved out from a world on the other side of the galaxy, forged into something capable of manipulating the mechanics of an organism down to an atomic level. It was meant as the last line of defense in case the Kree’s little science experiments rebelled against their masters.

“No,” she says firmly. It’s an emotional response. Anger, she remembers. She’s almost too giddy from it to realize her mistake, but when he leans forward in interest, it’s all too clear she’s made one.

“No _what_ , Simmons?”

Well, in for a penny, she supposes. “You can’t use it against them.”

He smiles like she’s told a joke. “Can’t?”

She nods curtly, unwilling to elaborate. She shouldn’t give Ward more than she has to. Shouldn’t give him _anything_.

He pulls the tablet back and returns it to its spot near the edge of the table, his eyes never leaving her. Whatever he sees, he doesn’t seem surprised. “Are you controlling her? Or just influencing her?” He kicks at her calf gently. “Is this even her at all?”

She’s not sure how to answer that, and likely spends far too long mulling it over because he pulls out the gun again.

“Whatever you’ve done to Simmons, I think we’ve pretty much established that this can hurt you.”

All at once she remembers what it was like in the Artic base, preparing to kill him. It’s one of her most charged memories and one she’s returned to frequently in the past months, but this is the first time she’s truly felt that deep, burning hatred again. She’s shaking, actually shaking with rage, and fists her hands to keep herself together.

“The weapon,” she says, and for the first time in months she doesn’t have to fake the emotion in her voice, “is not for you to use. It‘s not for _anyone_ anymore. It took her. It felt her fear and her desperation, and they were … amazing.” She remembers that, what it was like to touch all that emotion after millennia of stagnation. The artifact was never alive, but it was something close to it, and a brush with real consciousness was too much to give up. “It tried to hold on to them, but it only managed to wash them away. By the time it settled, there was almost nothing left of her. So it supplemented parts of itself, fusing the two of them together until there was only …”

“Only you.” She can’t read Ward’s emotions, but she doesn’t think it’s because she’s lost touch with her own. “If you’re … _one_ ,” he says, trying to wrap his mind around the question of her being, “how is the artifact still inside SHIELD?”

She shrugs, careless. “I came from two separate beings, is it so odd that I can split my consciousness between two bodies?” It’s really not so different from remembering what came before. It’s even easier, in some ways, than trying to reconcile twenty-nine years of mortal life with the unending existence of a weapon.

“Does that mean you can see what it sees?”

Her other half doesn’t exactly _see_ anything, but she’s as aware of its surroundings as it would be alone. “Yes.”

“And it feels what you feel?”

The question, she’s sure, is meant to refer to physical pain, but it only reminds her of what she’s lost. The part of her that was the artifact has gained mobility and freedom to choose its own fate, but it has lost some measure of invulnerability. And the part of her that was Jemma Simmons…

Earlier, he alluded to the last time her other half lost its stability. It was nine days prior to her kidnapping, when she was shot on a mission. The bullet caught her in the leg. She didn’t bleed. She _oozed_ , her body forcing out the bullet and sealing over in a matter of minutes.

Her body - her human body - was lost in the joining. This is an approximation, kept up more by her memory of what a body felt like than anything else. It’s little more than skin now. Organs and bones would be excellent, would likely help her to feel more human and possibly feel emotion again, but maintaining them is difficult.

“Jemma?” The use of her first name draws her out of her thoughts. Ward is smiling at her. “Sorry. You weren’t answering to Simmons, so I figured…” He shrugs, unapologetic. “Why haven’t you told the others?”

She realizes suddenly that the brief flare of anger she felt has hurt her more than her lack of fear did. He’s digging, and she’s allowed him to gain so much. She presses her lips together, refusing to answer.

He only smiles on, unphased. “I can guess,” he says softly. “You called it a weapon. From the way they act around it, they probably know that’s what it is too. You know that what you used to be to them won’t matter at all once they realize the truth. Every time you saved their lives, every time you solved some impossible puzzle, none of that will matter. You’ll be a monster. And they’ll put you in a cage, just like they’ve done to … well, to you.”

Her chains clink as she shifts her hands on the table. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to equate your exposure as a HYDRA agent with what’s happened to me.”

His smile doesn’t falter and, honestly, she’s not sure it should. If she were just Jemma, she would hate him for daring to try, but she’s not. There’s barely any Jemma left in her at all anymore, certainly not enough to be angry that he’d try this particular tactic.

Besides, he’s right. She’s a weapon - or part of her was built to be one - meant to wipe out an entire race. A race which Coulson is trying to broker peace with and which includes a member of the team. They won’t be able to risk all of that on the chance that there’s still any of Jemma left inside her.

Ward has used her distraction to his advantage, coming around the table without her even noticing until he tips her chin up, drawing her attention to him. “You’re right,” he says, “I’m trying to tell you that I understand. I have no idea what it was like to go through what you did, but the stuff that came after? The knowledge that these people you love will hate you for things you can’t undo? That I get.”

He’s still holding her chin, the faint pressure sending bolts of sensation through her. It reminds her of the first moments the artifact touched Jemma’s mind. It reminds her of being alive.

Perhaps that’s why she doesn’t even consider pulling away or fighting back when he bends down to kiss her. The physical pressure is barely more than that of his fingers on her chin, but the _effect_. This is nothing like kissing Fitz, which was always more an exercise in trying to emulate than in feeling for herself. Every cell of her body feels charged. A tightness pulls low in her gut - and she _has_ a gut. She can feel the weight of bones and the motion of blood through veins, the snap of neurons firing and the burn of air trapped in her lungs. She presses upward, desperate to hold onto this feeling, but he breaks the kiss.

She nearly sobs, but he doesn’t end the contact entirely. His forehead rests against hers and his hand moves from her chin, around into her hair. It’s more distant now, the weight of a real, human body, but it’s still there, anchored by his hold on her.

“You are definitely not Simmons,” he says, a slight chuckle in his voice. One-handed, he undoes her cuffs. Maybe to take her to a cell. Maybe to hitch her to that hook in the ceiling. She doesn’t care much more now than she did when she woke up here. The only thing she cares about - the only thing she’s really cared about in a long time - is twisting her fingers into his shirt to pull him down for another kiss, another taste of humanity.

She should probably be worried about the pleased smile she glimpses before she’s again overwhelmed by feeling. Jemma would be. But he’s right. She’s not Jemma. Not anymore.


End file.
